Venezuela Embraces Linux and FOSS

Voline writes "In the past few years the Venezuelan government has pursued a policy of 'Open source whenever possible, propietary software only when necesary.' This article from Venezuelanalysis.com provides a good overview of recent efforts on this front. Pres Chávez sees FOSS as a way to save money, develop the domestic software industry, and to reduce dependence on foreign (mostly US) suppliers. One of Chávez's advisors, José Luis Rey, is the former president of the Venezuela Linux Users Group."

Comments

Re:Hello, world?

[Espectr0]

It's sad to tell you that i am here, are a member of VELUG, and don't know much. This article was posted 2 years ago (the one included to use OSS when we could), yet we used Windows inside the electoral machines sold by Smartmatic.

Some things i do know, is that the initial backer for this project was Felipe Perez Marti, which was the Minister of Science and Technology.

Appearing from nowhere, Microsoft gave the goverment a new deal, and seems we were back to "normal". The minister was let go a few months later than the original article, and it seems the project got stuck.

In our current regime, when someone screws up, he just gets another job in the goverment. We have had over 7 presidents of our oil industry, about 4 ministers of defense, and so on.

Now, the article does tell that the infocenters had Windows and now are using OSS, but is scarse on details.

Last november, even Stallman was here. A friend that saw him told it was funny to see him with a strange hat, saying in broken spanish "i am the minister of the church of Emacs". Priceless.

The article points that the former minister is still involved and also says that our oil industry will be switching to OSS. That will sure be interesting, as the software used there is the most expensive kind you can get, in any country. I won't believe it until i see it.